TV-Radio Notebook: Another Houston stop for Nantz

One of Jim Nantz’s running punch lines is that he has hometowns in every corner of the map, given his father’s frequent moves during his business career and his own travels as a broadcaster.

Houston, of course, is on that list as the longtime home of his mother, Doris, and his late father, Jim Jr., and of his collegiate alma mater — the University of Houston. For the second time in three years, Nantz is in town to call the NCAA Tournament South Regional games from Reliant Stadium for CBS.

If that’s not enough, he also has a hometown team on the court. Turns out that before the Nantzes moved to Houston, they spent a year in Moraga, Calif., home of Saint Mary’s College, which plays Baylor in one of tonight’s games.

And unless there’s a Westwood One radio affiliate in Moraga, which is near Oakland, Nantz will be the only voice heard calling the Gaels’ game in Moraga tonight. It turns out that Saint Mary’s doesn’t have a traditional radio outlet; a school staff member regularly does play-by-play for a school Internet site, but that service has been suspended for the Tournament.

“Can you imagine being in the Sweet 16 and you don’t have a radio contract?” Nantz said. “You talk about the little guy being at the same event with the brand names of college basketball …”

Clearly, Nantz still cares to search out the stories amid the fine print of press releases and media guides as he calls for the second time in the same year the Super Bowl, the Final Four and the Masters.

When he did it in 2007, he was in the midst of compiling stories for what became Always By My Side, his book about his relationship with his father, who died in June 2008.

“It took nine months, which was a beautiful nine months of reflection on a beautiful journey through my past and my family’s history,” he said.

“I have to admit, though, that the last couple of weeks I’ve thought about how I wish I could write a book about it again. There are so many stories I wish I could expand on from a sentence in a broadcast to get into the depth of some of the stories and some of the relationships.”

As for what to expect on the court this weekend, Baylor vs. Saint Mary’s likely will be as much of a mystery for Nantz and broadcast partner Clark Kellogg as it will be for the rest of the nation, since neither has called a game involving the Gaels or the Bears.

Duke-Purdue, however, could take on overtones of Reliant Stadium’s normal tenants, Kellogg said.

“Purdue will face a bigger team in Duke — a bigger, rebounding team — but they will scratch and claw and try to make it happen,” he said. “It could be a slugfest kind of game. It may not be aesthetically pleasing. I hope shots go in the basket, but I’m anticipating kind of a slugfest.”

NCAA by the numbers

Through four nights, CBS is averaging a 4.8 Nielsen rating and 11 share for the NCAA Tournament, down 2 percent from 4.9/11 a year ago. Houston, which generally sags considerably off the pace, is close to the average this time around, with a 4.7 rating and 11 share on KHOU (Channel 11), up 62 percent from 2.9/7 last year. …

CBSSports.com logged 8.7 million hours of streaming video for the first four days of the NCAA Tournament, up 35 percent from a year ago, and had more than six million unique visitors for its March Madness on Demand player. The Boss Button, designed by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, drew 3.3 million clicks, and the most watched game (521,000 hours) was the Florida-BYU double-overtime game, followed by Robert Morris-Villanova at 462,000 hours.

Four DVRs, no waiting

Jon Miller, the most recent winner of the Ford Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Joe Morgan will open ESPN’s first full day of baseball coverage April 5 with Giants-Astros on ESPN2. Miller switches from suits to Bermuda shorts Tuesday to call games for Giants radio, so the stop makes logistical sense. …

Chet Simmons, who helped launch ABC Sports and was president of NBC Sports and ESPN and the founding commissioner of the USFL, died Thursday in Atlanta. He was 81. …

Shots that Made History at the Masters, a compilation of clips and interviews detailing great shots in tournament history, will air at 1:30 p.m. April 10 on CBS. Nantz will host the show, produced by Mickey Holden’s Holden Production Group in Dallas. …

As expected, New York will be ESPN’s fifth market for a local Web site. ESPNNewYork.com will launch April 2. … Not to be critical of personalties, but, given that the NFL Films/HBO news release Thursday regarding the Jets being picked for Hard Knocks focused on “charismatic” coach Rex Ryan, how much of a chance do you think the Texans had of making the cut? …

The Yates boys basketball team will join Todd Freed for High School Sports Live at 5 p.m. Saturday on KTBU (Channel 55), followed by Freed’s annual awards show honoring top boys and girls basketball teams and players. …

Local multimedia maven Chance McClain of KGOW (1560 AM) says his musical short Horrible Turn, an unauthorized prequel to Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, has been nominated for the 2010 Streamy Awards in the category of best original music. The awards, which recognize achievement in Web TV production and entertainment, will be presented next month in Los Angeles.

Performers include Spencer Tillman, Sean Pendergast and Raheel Ramazanali, all of whom, thankfully, opted to keep their day jobs. It can be viewed free of charge at horribleturn.com. …

There were a few interesting upticks and downticks during February for sports radio in Houston, according to the latest Arbitrons. The four all-sports stations combined for a 5.8 share among men 25-54 in morning drive and 5.1 in afternoon drive. KFNC (97.5 FM) has taken the lead at midday from KILT (610 AM), which leads the other dayparts. KFNC, KGOW and KBME (790 AM) are neck and neck for second behind KILT in morning drive, and KBME is moving within striking distance of KILT in afternoon drive.

… Former Astros infielder Morgan Ensberg and Olympic softball gold medalists Michelle Smith, Jessica Mendoza and Amanda Freed are among the analysts for ESPN’s college baseball and softball games this season. Games on tap include Texas-Oklahoma baseball on April 3, Longhorns-Sooners softball on April 18, Missouri-Texas A&M softball on April 25, Baylor-Texas baseball on May 1 and Georgia-Texas softball on May 9-10. …

Joe Buck, on St. Louis radio station KSLG, says he doubts his Joe Buck Live show will return to HBO. “I think there’s been kind of a shift in the philosophy there, and where that show ends up in the wash, we’ll find out,” he said. “ … There was a lot more behind the scenes and a lot more effort and hassle than I ever expected, and that goes from booking guests to actually getting guests there to, obviously, the Artie Lang thing in the first show.” …

60 Minutes’ annual post-NCAA Tournament sports story Sunday night will be on Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire owner-to-be of the New Jersey Nets. … Kevin Kugler and Pete Gillen are calling the South Regional games at Reliant Stadium for Westwood One radio. …

Univision says it will air all 64 World Cup games on Univision, TeleFutura and Galavision in HDTV and also will stream the games at UnivisionFutbol.com. … ESPN’s Outside the Lines at 8 a.m. Sunday recalls the use of Santa Anita Park as a World War II internment camp for Japanese-Americans, including the grandfather of 2008 Santa Anita Derby-winning jockey Corey Nakatani. …

This is kind of interesting: In the wake of its recent football success, TCU is leaving KESN, the ESPN Radio-owned station in Dallas-Fort Worth, for AM blowtorch WBAP and its new FM simulcast signal of KPMZ. …

CBS’ Bill Raftery, on The Dan Patrick Show, regarding the definition of “onions” in a sports context: “I just think it means when the kids step up and respond in the most critical of moments. … I don’t mean in any way to be suggestive or anything. It’s the biggest time in most of their lives – their last stand for a lot of these guys.” …

Global Golf Adventure, hosted by Mark Rolfing, premieres at 1 p.m. Saturday on NBC with an episode featuring Michelle Wie and Hawaiian golf destinations. Continental Airlines is presenting sponsor. … Former Oregon football coach and athletic director Mike Bellotti will join ESPN as a college football analyst. …

Finally, let me first say I enjoyed Johnny Weir’s reality show Be Good Johnny Weir on Sundance Channel. It was a worthwhile look at his preparation and his mindset as he prepared for the 2010 Winter Olympics. That being said, he comes off as totally whiny with his comments to Universal Sports regarding his sixth-place finish in Vancouver.

A few minutes after the men’s long program, Weir acknowledged in the interview area he had a “few small flubs” in his program, so even he knew he wasn’t up to medals standards. Now, however, he’s saying, “It’s a very political game. When I took the ice, there was already an American assured a place on the podium. Everyone got who they wanted on the podium, except for me and my fans.”

Look, he skated, and he was beaten by better competitors. Try being a good sport, Johnny Weir. … Universal Sports has the ladies short program live at 11 a.m. today and the free dance live at 3 p.m. today from Turin and the ladies long program live at 9 a.m. Saturday, with nightly re-airs of each show